Ghost Stories
by SETI-fan
Summary: In the disaster-stricken streets of Gotham, Detective Driver witnesses a meeting between two people he thought long gone. (Set during an unnamed Crisis sometime after Gotham Central.)
Every city has its ghost stories, and Gotham was no different.

Marcus Driver knew this, but he still hated that it seemed like every damn one of them happened when he was on duty.

Granted, most of Gotham's horror stories were more about monsters – mad scientists who literally froze your blood in your veins, murderous clowns that would make Stephen King hide under the bed, every kind of animal-human hybrids from crocodile-men to batmen both literal and in name only.

But given the city's overwhelming mortality rates, it should be no surprise ghosts were just as common.

Tonight, as Driver staggered into an alley and collapsed against a pile of trash bags, he wondered how many new spirits were being liberated from their living bodies.

They would probably call whatever was happening now a Crisis. He didn't know how they decided what was a Crisis and what was just another garden variety mass disaster in Gotham, but either way, the city was under siege yet again. The sky had gone a weird orange yesterday and the air itself seemed like it was vibrating with some kind of bad energy. Some people on the street were calling it an apocalypse, others saying somebody had called some bad magic down on the world. It hardly mattered, really. The GCPD couldn't do anything to stop something on that scale, only to manage the loss of life and chaos on the ground until it passed.

And chaos there was. Most of the city's criminal underground lived on a hair-trigger. He swore a pigeon taking off at the wrong time could set off a gang war in this crazy town. So something like this? It was like tearing the doors off an asylum.

Driver grimaced, wondering how long it would be until they started dealing with escapees from Arkham on top of this mess.

Well, someone else was going to have to handle things for a few minutes. Driver had already been on duty for fourteen hours without more than an occasional toilet break for relief. His reaction time was getting sluggish and that had cost him during the last skirmish he broke up. One of the thugs had managed to catch him against the side with an aluminum bat and he knew some of his ribs were broken. He had still put a stop to things, but after the rest of the gang scattered, the exhaustion, pain, and various blows he'd already taken to the head tonight caught up to him and he just wanted somewhere, anywhere to get off his feet for just a little while.

So Driver found himself lying in the relative softness of this filthy alley's garbage heap hoping nobody found him or called him right away. He knew it was stupid, that he should be finding someone to check his injuries, but that was a luxury he probably couldn't expect right now anyway. Sleep would be a passable alternative. Hopefully any passersby would just assume he was dead and not do anything more than try to loot him.

His eyes hadn't been closed for more than a minute or two when a sudden intense cold fell over him and a voice boomed through the alley. He jerked awake, still hazy, but could make out a towering green figure on the street outside. Fear went through him and he struggled to sit up and defend himself, but as his eyes cleared enough to make out the green cloak surrounding a gigantic, pale gray man, he could also tell that the figure—the goddamn _hovering_ figure—was focused on someone out on the main street, not him.

He could barely make out what the eerie voice was saying, but he could feel the cold threat from where he lay, as well as a feeling similar to when he had been to trials presided over by utterly merciless judges. It was a feeling of damnation.

Before he could even begin to think if he should do something for the recipient of that glare, another figure leapt in front of the green spectre, blocking it from its victim. Driver wondered if it was one of his fellow officers, since she moved in a familiar rhythm, but he couldn't place her. His relief at seeing a possible sister in blue faded as he realized that, no matter how much he rubbed his eyes clear, he couldn't make out a face on her.

A chill went up his spine as he began to wonder if he was seeing some kind of phantom battle replaying itself by night in the Gotham streets. And who this faceless almost-cop might be, or might once have been.

The ghostly spirit had shifted its focus to her, apparently arguing with her. He couldn't make out the individual words due the alley's reverberation, but he got the gist that it wasn't happy being interfered with.

The woman then shook her head and suddenly a cloud of gas flowed around her, to Driver's addled mind almost taking on a sort of question mark. When he looked back at the woman, his skin crawled anew as she started peeling off her face—or lack thereof.

But then…shock replaced the horror as the features that emerged from behind the blank mask echoed from the past. A face he had last seen years before looking little better than death itself.

"Renee…?" he breathed, unable to get his voice louder than a hoarse rasp.

He should probably be relieved she didn't hear. He wasn't particularly in any shape to face the spirit himself and she oddly seemed to have a handle on things. Whatever she was now.

Word was Montoya had shown up in Captain Sawyer's office a year or so ago, having taken on a private investigator job. But that was all he'd heard. She had moved on and disappeared and made it clear she wasn't coming back. So how…?

Driver wasn't the only one who seemed affected by Renee Montoya's revelation. The tall man had come to rest on the ground, listening to her voice. Without her mask in the way and now that he knew the familiar tones to hone in on, Driver found himself better able to make out what she said.

"This isn't you. This isn't what the Spectre is meant to be either. You know that. This…force, it's affecting you, the way it is all the magic users. You have to fight it and remember who you are."

The man looked away, but after only a moment's hesitation, he groaned and folded in on himself, shrinking. As the green cloak faded, Driver was absolutely convinced he was dreaming or hallucinating because suddenly there was former Detective Crispus Allen. In the 'dead' meaning of 'former'. Standing before the partner whose life had been likewise destroyed by his murder.

Allen spoke softly then, in the voice Driver remembered from countless crime scenes and shift overlaps. Driver couldn't make out the words anymore, but he saw the situation had calmed. Apparently Montoya really did have a knack for talking down those with a monstrous side.

"It's all right," she said, speaking louder and more authoritatively again. "Now, I've got enough to deal with down here. You think you can deal with the more supernatural side of things?"

"You always try to pass off the harder assignments to me, don't you, Renee?"

"Well, it's your own fault for being so damn good at your job."

Allen chuckled then and Driver found the familiar banter of police partners unnerving in the context. Then, in a somewhat sadder voice, he added, "Not quite like old times, huh?"

"No," Montoya agreed, a bit brusquely. "But even if we still had our badges, we wouldn't be the same people we were back then, would we? Does anybody actually stay the same forever or do we just try to see those memories and ignore how much things are changing?"

Allen shook his head. "Careful, partner. That mask's really starting to rub off on you." His tone sobered, getting softer. "Be safe out there, all right?"

"Yeah," she said, looking away down the road behind her, "I've got someone watching my back. You do the same. I don't want to have to deal with your dead body a third time."

 _Third time?_

"Trust me," Allen said, resuming the frightening phantom form. "Neither do I."

And then he disappeared like smoke fading in the breeze. Montoya took a moment to breathe, watching him go, then put her own mask back on in another cloud of mist.

She had turned to leave, but stopped, her blank face angling down the alleyway. Driver knew he was hidden in deep shadow, but he still barely dared breathe as the invisible eyes passed over him. He wasn't sure why exactly he should be so afraid of being seen by her, but he had the profound sense that her musings were correct, and whoever she was now was not the woman he had shared old coffee and crime scenes with years ago.

Then something caught her attention down the road outside and Montoya, or whatever remained of her, was gone.

Driver stayed where he was, trying to absorb what he had just seen.

"Marcus!"

The familiar voice snapped him back into focus, as if breaking a spell. "Josie?"

"Marcus!" He had never been happier to see his partner, Josephine MacDonald, appear in the mouth of the alley. "What happened?!"

"Punk kid got me with a baseball bat," Driver said, pulling himself into more of a sitting position. The fogginess in his mind cleared as reality seemed to return. "Broke a few ribs."

She was at his side, wincing as she helped him sit up. "Think you can walk?"

"Yeah. I just needed to crash for a minute, I guess."

"Well good. Because while you were taking your catnap a bunch of Penguin's boys started trouble with the local toughs. The capes are caught up handling all the mystical shit that's going on, so we need all the hands we can keep here."

"I'll be all right. Just let you do all the heavy lifting until I can get these things taped."

"Right. Well let's start with me lifting your heavy ass out of that trash."

As Josie helped him to his feet again, Driver took one more look to the entrance of the alley, wondering whether any of that had actually happened. There were no signs left of anyone unusual being there and Josie hadn't mentioned seeing anything when she got there. Maybe it had all been a head trauma dream, but something about it felt too solid…

And then they were off and looking for the next crime to stop and fight to break up, because for the GCPD some things never changed no matter how crazy their world got.

Ghosts were funny things. Stories never did really agree on exactly why they existed. Sometimes they seemed to be about making sure a past sin was never forgotten. Sometimes they were about revenge or unfinished business. Or maybe they were just tormented souls, trapped in the pain their lives had inflicted on them.

But the one comforting thing about ghosts, Driver mused, was that they at least they gave you some hope that those people who had left were still out there, one way or another. That people didn't just disappear, unremembered and without meaning. And maybe, in a job like theirs, that was all you could really ask for.

* * *

 **I've long loved the idea of Renee and Cris encountering members of their old MCU teams while in their new identities. I'd still love to write out more of such an encounter with the whole group someday, but for now this just felt like a potentially realistic and interesting moment that could happen during one of the many random Crises or magic-user wars that wrack the DC Universe every so often.**


End file.
